Bright Lights, Big City

Book #49 on my reading list this year was Jay McInerney's Bright Lights, Big City.

If you had to pick just one book from the 80's to stick in a time capsule it'd probably be this one. Yuppies? Check. Cocaine? Check. Michael J. Fox? Check. It's also smart, dynamic (2nd person!) and a great read.

Why I Read This One
It's a book that pops up frequently in discussions of the best novels of the past 25 years. I'd avoided it a long time due to the movie, which is odd since I've never even seen the film and shouldn't harbor any ill will towards it. The thing that finally pushed me over the precipice was McInerney's associations with Raymond Carver who he studied under and who blurbed BLBC as a 'rambunctious, deadly funny novel that goes right for the mark - the human heart'. Anyone who's alright with Carver is alright with me. Didn't hurt that the two other blurbs on my copy were Richard Ford and a comparison to Catcher in the Rye.

Wikipedia
Salon interview
Fan page
EW's 100 New Classics

My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead

Tome #13 was My Mistress's Sparrow Is Dead: Great Love Stories, from Chekov to Munro.

It's not every day you find short story collections that mix works of some of today's best writers: George Saunders, Miranda July, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, etc. alongside great writers of the past such as James Joyce, William Faulkner, Anton Chekov and Vladimir Nabakov. It's a bold choice on the part of editor Jeffrey Eugenides and one he manages to pull off without coming across as a Schelleyian madman. If you're guessing at this point that this must be a McSweeney's project give yourself a big pat on the back. Proceeds from this one go 826 Chicago and their sweet secret agent supply store.

Hard to pick favorite stories especially since I'd read some of the pieces previously but in terms of writers who piqued my interest for reading more, I'd go with Harold Brodkey whose two stories were both excellent.

Previously: The Book of Other People

Independence Day

Book #36 on my 2006 reading list was Richard Ford's Pulitzer Prize and PEN/Faulkner Award winning Independence Day.

Although you might be thinking "Oh, Indepedence Day. You mean that terrible movie with Will Smith and the aliens?", I'm not gonna kid you you're not even close (and you'd probably say awesome instead of terrible). This Independence Day is the sequel to Ford's previous work The Sportwriter. Ford does look a little like Tommy Lee Jones though.

Anyways, in this novel Ford follows ex-sportswriter now real estate agent Frank Bascombe through a Fourth of July weekend. Over the holiday, the now divorced and middle-age Bascombe begins to break out of what he has deemed his 'Existence Period' into a whole new epoch in his life. We get to meet Bascombe's ex-wife, his possibly crazy son, his new lover, a husband and wife struggling to come to terms with the price of new homes, the propieter of Bascombe's hot dog stand, and a large ensemble of other crazy characters. Expanding the three days out into 450+ pages, Ford digs deep into Bascombe's psyche creating a character study whose level of detail is reminiscent of other great literary characters such as Bellow's Henderson (whom this site was named after).

Although I really enjoyed Ford's writing style, it took me awhile to really get into this one, fortunately it's one of those novels that grows on you the further and further you get into it, so by the end I didn't want to put it down. By sheer coincidence it looks like I managed to read this one just in time, as Ford has just published a new novel titled The Lay of the Land which picks up as the third installment of the Frank Bascombe story. Ford will be in town reading from the new novel on October 25th at Town Hall.

Interview in Salon